In addition to his extensive experience in financial services, Steve has always believed in giving back to the community. Steve started law school in the 1980s, a terribly dark time for people with HIV. Believing that lawyers have a responsibility to help those who cannot afford legal assistance, Steve began his long history of volunteer work even before becoming admitted to practice. In 1988, Steve started volunteering for the Los Angeles County Bar Association's Hospice/AIDS Project and still does pro bono work for the project to this day. In 1988, while waiting for his bar results, Steve was asked to chair the committee overseeing the Project, a position he held for three years. The Hospice/AIDS Project joined the collaboration of AIDS service organizations' legal services teams in 1998 to form the HIV and AIDS Legal Services Alliance, Inc., better known as HALSA. In 2004, Steve was asked to join HALSA's Board of Directors. In the following years, Steve served as Board Secretary for one year, Treasurer for one year, Vice President for two years, and President for four years, a period which saw HALSA become the nation's largest HIV/AIDS dedicated law firm. In 2005, HALSA was honored with the American Bar Association's Pro Bono Service Award for its Legal Check-up program. Sadly, HALSA had to shut its doors in 2013 due to lack of funding, but its projects remain active at other organizations.
It was during his time at HALSA that Steve decided to take what he had learned about non-profit legal services and to apply it more broadly. In 2010, Steve was asked to join the California State Bar Association's Interest on Lawyer's Trust Accounts Commission which allocates millions of dollars to non-profit legal providers around California every year. That appointment ended in 2013, but in 2014, Steve was asked to serve on the State Bar's Standing Committee for the Delivery of Legal Services (SCDLS), which was tasked with encouraging and rewarding pro bono legal services providers.
While serving on SCDLS, Steve and two of his colleagues formed the idea of launching a legal clinic to assist transgender persons. Steve's husband, Phillip, sat on the Board of Directors of the LGBT Center OC and told Steve about the Center's groundbreaking work for the transgender population but that it lacked legal support. When one of his SCDLS colleagues told Steve that services for the transgender population in Orange County were strained, at best, Steve and his friends starting planning the Transgender Legal Assistance Clinic. The Clinic launched in October of 2015 in conjunction with University of California, Irvine School of Law, the Orange County Superior Court, the LGBT Center OC and the private bar. The project has served thousands of clients since its inception. It's model has even been duplicated at University of San Diego Law School, U.C. Davis's King Hall, and Loyola Law School, with Steve consulting on the last two projects.